I was just writing a response to a comment on my ''Sell Yourself!'' presentation (http://sqlblog.com/blogs/michael_coles/archive/2010/12/05/sell-yourself-presentation.aspx#comments), and it started getting a little lengthy so I decided to turn it into a blog post. The ''Sell Yourself!'' post got a couple of very good comments on the ...

Let's face it, there is a wide variety of skill out there. If you spend any time monitoring StackOverflow, MSDN forums, Ask SQL Server Central or twitter's #sqlhelp hash tag, you'll be very well aware that there are people out there barely managing their database environments - people that some of us wouldn't let within a mile of our own data ...

I want to make a disclaimer before I dive into this topic – At Microsoft we use all kinds of development methodologies, and I’ve worked in lots of other shops using lots of methodologies. This is one of those “religious” topics like which programming language or database is best, and is bound to generate some heat. But this isn’t pointed towards ...

I read Jeffery Hicks’ article in this month’s Redmond Magazine on a new add-in for Windows PowerShell 2.0. It’s called the PowerShell Pack and it has a some great new features that I plan to put into place on my production systems as soon as I finished learning and testing them.
You can download the pack here if you have PowerShell 2.0. I’m ...

I was working this weekend with a fairly simple Excel spreadsheet, and I had to decompose one cell in it out to three columns in a SQL Server table. There are tools within SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) that should be able to do that, but I just couldn’t find my way around them properly.
I’m not as familiar with SSIS as I would like to be ...

Saturday I volunteered at a work-day at our church. Our building is one of the first buildings built in this area of Washington, so it’s a beautiful old structure, which of course means there’s lots of maintenance.
I’m fairly decent with tools, I’ve done some woodworking in my day, and I’ve even rebuilt a car or two. But working on a structure ...

I’m a big fan of code that writes code – most of the time. For instance, whenever you use the “templates” feature in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) or the Maintenance Wizard, you’re using code that writes other code. There’s even a trick of writing Transact-SQL (T-SQL) code that in turn creates other code.
But there is a class of code ...

Most data professionals I’ve met work in two modes: we plan for our day, and we react to the situations around us. I’m staring at my list of things that I need to do today right now, which is my planned work. Of course, I have no idea how much of that will really get done – it’s optimistic to be sure. On the other hand I have several systems I ...

I need your help. I know how I create databases, and I’ve watched a lot of other data professionals follow their own processes for that, but I want to know how YOU do it.
I’ve written about the process I follow for a complete database design on InformIT (use the ''Next'' button at the bottom of these to see them all). Beyond starting ...

As the Data Professional in your organization, the rest of the org looks to you to ensure that the system can handle what the business requires. To do that, you need to know two things: what the business requires, and what SQL Server can do.
But of course there’s a bit more to it than that. Knowing the business side of the requirements – well, I ...